Tag: sexual abuse

Sen. Cory Gardner was quick out the gate to say Moore should be expelled if he ends up in the Senate — something that requires a two-thirds majority vote and hasn’t been done in 155 years. Gardner, head of the Senate Republican campaign committee, released a stunning statement, stating clearly that if Moore “refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him.”

If they can’t get the clergy sex abuse mess right, after all their protestations that they had taken steps to deal with the problem, and all their claims that the Catholic Church was now ahead of the curve on the issue, that our policies were such that the Catholic Church was the safest place for a child to be, nothing else matters.

The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted.

They have succeeded in destroying the authority they were so obsessed in protecting.

We urge this not primarily as journalists seeking a story, but as Catholics who appreciate that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary response. Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church. It is that serious.

“A McCain-Palin campaign ad claims Obama’s ‘one accomplishment’ in the area of education was ‘legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergarteners.’ But the claim is simply false, and it dates back to Alan Keyes’ failed race against Obama for an open Senate seat in 2004.”

It’s getting to the point where I’m having trouble keeping up. It seems obvious to me that the McCain has little of fact to support it’s campaign. Here’s an important quote from Obama when debating Keyes:

We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it’s medically accurate and age-appropriate. Now, I’ll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean. And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that’s the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.

Damn right I would want that taught to my child. It’s getting so, that I’m cussin’!

“At a news conference in Boston organized by a victims’ group, Mr. Costello, who said he was abused by a priest in West Roxbury, Mass., starting when he was 10, said he was shocked that the pope would talk about his own suffering and that of the church while making no mention of the harm done to victims.”

This is what started the problem in the first place. The concern for the institution of the church, consisting of the clergy mostly, is the top concern. I’m sure that there are legal and fiscal reasons as well for his lack of empathy, but it also reveals how screwed up the priorities are in “the Church.” It’s shocking that still they violate Jesus’ edicts so glibly and frankly, so arrogantly. But my Church has not spared any effort in trying to shake my faith. This but the latest example. How they can demand faith in them is beyond me.